Alastair Cook is in a Vaughanian run of form down under. When he was batting with Jonathan Trott, it was a case of ‘the bowlers may change, but the batsmen remain the same’.

Was it the Ashes or some sort of Cook-Trott conceptual art? Can you detect the passage of time if there are no landmarks along the way? It’s daytime at night at the moment and whenever you turn on the telly – whatever day, whatever week – there’s Alastair Cook. Time no longer has meaning.

Cook should call his work ‘Australian Purgatory’. We’ve been in worse places.

Australia’s grass-is-greener selection policy could lead to Ryan Harris being replaced by Rolf by the end of the series if this carries on.

Sorry – That half a bottle of Amarone kicked in again immediately after the Strauss dismissal. My brain was probably using the chemical effect as a self-protection mechanism as it (the brain) foresaw the imminent England collapse.
I will try harder tonght.

I’m also looking forward to Marzipan’s eyeliner experiments. Urban Decay cosmetics do something called Eye-liner potion which keeps everything in place all day without too much of a panda eye effect developing at the close of play. But I’m sure it still wouldn’t be up to scoring a century in the Adelaide heat while loking immaculately made up.